No Secret Settlement or Appeasement with Trump's DOJ: Yale Must Defend Academic Freedom, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

No Secret Settlement or Appeasement with Trump's DOJ: Yale Must Defend Academic Freedom

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

July 6, 2026

Bravo to the Yale College Council for speaking with moral clarity at a moment when it is so urgently needed. President Maurie McInnis and Yale University should not capitulate to the Trump administration through a closed-door settlement with the Department of Justice (Nyberg & Lynn-Skov, 2026). To do so would not merely be a legal or administrative decision. It would be an act of appeasement with national consequences.

Yale need only look to Harvard to understand what is at stake. Harvard’s situation shows that resistance and capitulation can coexist uneasily within the same institution: even as Harvard sued the Trump administration and won important legal victories, it also renamed its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging as federal officials demanded the dismantling of DEI programs (Giordano & Patel, 2025). 

That concession did not end the pressure. Soon after, Harvard College and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences replaced several diversity offices, a move The Harvard Crimson described as a “major concession” to a central demand of the Trump administration (Scharf & Patel, 2025). Reports also followed that Harvard and the Trump administration were nearing a settlement framework involving a $500 million payment to restore access to federal funding and end investigations (Binkley, 2025; also see Berbenes, 2025). 

Students, faculty, alumni, and public officials warned that such a settlement would not protect Harvard’s independence; it would teach the Trump administration that intimidation works. Yale must not repeat that mistake. A university cannot bargain away lawful holistic admissions, diversity commitments, faculty governance, student rights, or institutional autonomy and still claim to be defending academic freedom. If Harvard’s experience teaches us anything, it is that appeasement does not satisfy authoritarian power. It feeds it.

Harvard students, faculty, and alumni have repeatedly warned that so-called “settlements” with the Trump administration are not neutral acts of institutional pragmatism. They are forms of political surrender that invite more demands, not fewer. As Harvard student writers argued in The Harvard Crimson, a bad deal with the Trump administration would not protect students, faculty, or the university. It would hand the administration a political victory and encourage the same strategy against other institutions (Gerdén, Kaplan & Molden, 2025).

Their critique is devastating because it comes from those most vulnerable to institutional compromise: international students, students of color, Jewish students, pro-Palestine students, researchers dependent on federal funding, and students whose speech, safety, and belonging have been placed in the crosshairs of federal power. 

Harvard students have rightly understood that capitulation does not end the assault. It widens it. It teaches the federal government that threats work. It tells other universities that the path of least resistance is to trade away institutional autonomy, student rights, faculty governance, and academic freedom for temporary relief.

This is precisely what Yale must refuse. The Trump administration’s pressure campaign against elite universities has not been limited to one issue or one campus. At Harvard, federal demands reportedly reached into hiring, admissions, student discipline, protest restrictions, international student scrutiny, and oversight of academic programs. 

The Harvard Crimson’s reporting described demands that would have disempowered faculty leaders, punished student groups, imposed ideological screening, and subjected academic units to external review (Mao & Paulus, 2025). These are not ordinary compliance matters. They are efforts to make universities govern themselves according to the political preferences of the state.

Harvard students and faculty have also named the deeper danger: appeasement does not work. As Harvard professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky (2025) argued, the reward for capitulation is more extortion. Universities that concede do not buy peace; they make themselves and others more vulnerable (Enos & Levitsky, 2025). 

That lesson should be etched into Yale’s decision-making. Any settlement that restricts lawful holistic admissions, compromises institutional independence, chills political speech, weakens faculty governance, or allows federal officials to dictate university policy would not protect Yale. It would implicate Yale in the broader dismantling of higher education as a democratic institution.

Nor can Yale claim neutrality by calling such a deal “prudent” or “strategic.” There are moments when caution becomes complicity. There are moments when institutional self-protection becomes betrayal. A university cannot teach students to pursue truth, defend democracy, and act with courage while its own leadership quietly bargains away the conditions that make those commitments possible.

Yale’s students understand this. So do many faculty and alumni. They know that the issue is not whether universities are above criticism or beyond reform. They are not. Universities must confront antisemitism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Blackness, anti-Latinx exclusion, anti-Asian racism, attacks on Indigenous sovereignty, anti-immigrant hostility, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of discrimination with seriousness and integrity. But that work must be done through democratic, educational, legally sound, and community-accountable processes—not through coercive settlements designed to place university life under partisan control.

President McInnis should listen to the students. The Yale College Council’s statement reflects precisely what democratic education is supposed to cultivate: young people who can recognize authoritarian overreach, name the stakes, and call institutions back to their highest principles (Yale College Council, 2026). Yale should be proud of them. More importantly, Yale should heed their moral and ethical clarity as you can hear for yourself in this video and follow their lead.

Yale has the resources, stature, alumni base, faculty strength, legal capacity, and moral obligation to resist. If Yale bends, less-resourced institutions will be placed in an even more precarious position. If Yale concedes behind closed doors, the consequences will reverberate across public and private higher education alike.

But if Yale refuses to capitulate, it can help establish a different precedent: that universities are not instruments of the state, that students are not bargaining chips, that admissions cannot be dictated by political intimidation, and that academic freedom—meaning the right to teach and learn—is not for sale.

This is also a test of President McInnis herself. Before leading Yale, Maurie McInnis served as executive vice president and provost at The University of Texas at Austin, beginning July 1, 2016, and remaining in that role until May 2020, when she left to become president of Stony Brook University (Canizales, 2020). President McInnis should not meet this moment with managerial caution or elite institutional self-protection. 

Courtesy of UT Austin

She should meet it with courage. No secret settlement. No abandonment of lawful holistic admissions. No surrender of institutional independence. No chilling of student speech. No weakening of faculty governance. No appeasement of authoritarian power.

Yale must not do what Harvard students have warned against. It must not mistake capitulation for peace. It must not confuse compliance with leadership. It must not teach the next generation that even the most powerful universities fold when democracy needs them to stand.

References

Berbenes, M. (2025, May 2). Tracking Trump’s war on elite universities: Which schools have lost funding and what they're doing about it, Yahoo News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/tracking-trumps-war-on-elite-universities-which-schools-have-lost-funding-and-what-theyre-doing-about-it-200621655.html

Binkley, C. (2025, August 13). Harvard and the Trump administration are nearing a settlement including a $500 million payment, Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-agreement-antisemitism-ivy-a84b88a8136a852aa305e508d012afb6

Canizales, A. (2020, March 26). Executive Vice President and Provost Maurie McInnis leaving UT-Austin, The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2020/03/26/executive-vice-president-and-provost-maurie-mcinnis-leaving-ut-austin/

Enos, R. D., & Levitsky, S. (2025, June 26). This isn’t negotiation. It’s authoritarian extortion, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/6/26/enos-levitsky-harvard-trump-negotiation-extortion/

Gerdén, L. Kaplan, T. L. & Molden, K. N. (2025, July 2). President Garber, a bad deal with Trump will not protect us, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/7/2/harvard-negotiation-trump-garber/

Giordano, J. J., & Patel, D. T. (2025, April 29). Harvard renames diversity office as Trump demands dismantling of DEI, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/29/harvard-oedib-renamed/

Mao, W. C. & Paulus, V. H. (2025, April 15). Trump’s demands to Harvard, analyzed, The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/15/trump-demands-analysis/

Nyberg, L., & Lynn-Skov, A. (2026, June 28). Yale seeks Trump deal as admissions inquiry reaches College, NYT reports. Yale Daily News. https://yaledailynews.com/articles/yale-seeks-trump-deal-as-admissions-inquiry-reaches-college-nyt-reports 

Scharf, A., & Patel, D. T. (2025, July 10). Harvard College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences replace diversity offices. The Harvard Crimson. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/7/10/college-fas-end-diversity-offices/

Yale College Council. (2026, July 4). Public statement on behalf of the Yale undergraduate student body regarding Yale’s ongoing settlement negotiations with the Trump administration [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwX1FqqaqjY

Rule by Crisis: Trumpism and the Attack on Democracy, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 19, 2026

Rule by Crisis: Trumpism and the Attack on Democracy

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 19, 2026

Link to article

Darrell M. West’s 2022 Brookings Institution essay, “Trump is not the only threat to democracy,” upon which I build from yesterday's blog, reads today less like a warning than a framework for understanding what has now come to fruition. 

Written in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, West’s central point was that Donald Trump represents an existential threat to democracy, but not the only one. The deeper danger lies in the political ecosystem—and echo chamber—that has learned from him, copied him, enabled him, and built governing machinery around authoritarian impulses (West, 2022).

West identified several interlocking threats: "copycat candidates, legal coups, a toxic information ecosystem, the decline of authoritative institutions, and the widespread prevalence of counter-majoritarianism in our political system" (West, 2022). Since Trump’s return to office, these dangers are no longer theoretical. They have become governing strategies. 

As The Washington Post reported, Trump’s first week back in power was designed to “flood the zone,” moving rapidly through executive actions, pardons, security-clearance revocations, and a detailed policy blueprint that reflected a far more organized operation than his first administration (Arnsdorf & Morse, 2025).

This is where Project 2025 matters. Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership gives institutional form to this anti-democratic project. It translates grievance into governance by pairing policy proposals with personnel pipelines, executive-branch restructuring, and a theory of presidential power that would make dissent within government difficult (Dans & Groves, 2023). The level of planning is all still quite chilling.

Even as Trump and his advisers attempted during the campaign to distance themselves from it, The Washington Post reported that several top officials in the incoming administration had ties to the Project 2025 coalition, including Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and Tom Homan (Arnsdorf & Morse, 2025).

What we are witnessing, then, is not simply Trump’s personal grievance politics. It is the institutionalization of those grievances into executive action, budget policy, personnel decisions, ideological discipline, and attacks on the very institutions that make democratic accountability possible.

West’s warning about “legal coups” is especially important. The danger is not always dramatic. It can arrive through emergency declarations, executive orders, manipulated funding streams, attacks on courts, and legal theories that stretch presidential power beyond democratic limits. 

Trump’s executive order attempting to restrict birthright citizenship effectively placed a long-settled constitutional guarantee under direct challenge (Sacchetti et al., 2025). The Post has also reported that emergency powers have become central to Trump’s governing style, with critics warning that the administration is invoking crises to justify extraordinary executive authority (Bendavid, 2025).

The ill-fated Iran War—as we must all surely know by now—is another manifestation of this same anti-democratic pattern. This is not simply a foreign policy issue. It is a constitutional issue. Congress, not the president alone, holds the power to declare war. 

Yet Meyer & Alfaro (2026) reported that the House passed a war powers resolution seeking to push Trump to end a conflict that Congress had not authorized, while the Senate considered similar measures amid growing impatience over the administration’s unilateral conduct of the war. Days later, the Republican-led Senate rejected a resolution that would have blocked Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, underscoring the degree to which congressional checks on war-making power have weakened under partisan pressure (Meyer, 2026).

That matters because democracy is not only about elections. It is also about whether constitutional limits mean anything when the executive branch claims emergency authority, bypasses Congress, and then dares the other branches to stop it. 

War concentrates power. It disciplines dissent. It shifts public attention away from domestic accountability. These are useful ploys for tyrants as these can be used to rally obedience, punish critics, and normalize rule by crisis. In this sense, the Iran War fits West’s warning about legal coups and emergency powers: authoritarianism often advances not by openly abolishing democracy, but by hollowing out the institutions that restrain executive power.

The attack on higher education fits squarely within West’s concern about the decline of authoritative institutions. Universities, news organizations, nonprofits, courts, think tanks, and professional associations are essential to democratic life because they produce knowledge, preserve evidence, hold power accountable, and teach people to think critically. That is precisely why they are under attack.

Notwithstanding Trump's Compact for higher education (Austin American-Statesman Editorial Board (2025), the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against universities makes this clear. 

Columbia University’s compliance with federal demands under threat of losing $400 million in federal funding generated widespread concern over academic freedom, shared governance, student protest rights, and government intrusion into curriculum (Powers & Brown, 2025). Columbia later reached a settlement with the Trump administration: the university agreed to pay $200 million to the federal government and $21 million to resolve related employment claims, while regaining access to much of its federal research funding—a resolution critics viewed as a dangerous precedent for federal coercion of universities (Office of the President, 2025; Reuters, 2025)

Harvard, by contrast, publicly resisted federal demands that reached into governance, hiring, admissions, DEI programming, student protest policy, and the intellectual life of the university. Federal officials responded in April 2025 by freezing billions in research funds. Although U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs later ruled the freeze unlawful and the administration reinstated grants and contracts previously awarded to Harvard, the Trump administration appealed the ruling and continued its broader legal campaign against the university (Raymond, 2025; Raymond & Stempel, 2026; also see Guardian Staff and Agencies).

The Widener Library at Harvard University, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Cambridge, 

Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) via Associated Press

For those of us in Texas, none of this feels distant. We have already witnessed the state-level version of this same project through attacks on DEI, tenure, shared governance, ethnic studies, gender studies, and academic freedom. What is happening nationally under Trump is connected to what we have seen in Texas, Florida, and other states: the effort to narrow what can be taught, who can belong, which histories count, and which institutions are permitted to challenge power.

West also warned about attacks on the information ecosystem. Here, too, his concerns have been borne out. Trump’s escalating lawsuits against media organizations—including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and others—must be understood not only as legal actions, but as intimidation strategies aimed at independent journalism (Wagner & Nover, 2026). A democracy cannot function when journalists are chilled, universities are threatened, lawyers are punished, and public servants are expected to demonstrate loyalty to a person rather than to the Constitution.

The attack on law firms is similarly alarming. The Washington Post has reported on executive orders targeting major law firms, including measures affecting contracts, security clearances, and access to federal buildings. These actions strike at the independence of the legal profession and the right to representation—both foundational to the rule of law (Berman & Stein, 2026). When lawyers fear representing disfavored clients, democracy itself is weakened.

Finally, West’s point about counter-majoritarianism remains crucial. The United States already has political structures that allow minority rule: the Electoral College, the Senate, gerrymandered districts, voter suppression, and a judiciary shaped by presidents who did not always win the popular vote. Trumpism exploits these structures. It does not need majority support to govern aggressively. It needs institutional leverage, fear, disinformation, and compliance.

This is why West’s essay remains so urgent. Trump is dangerous, but Trumpism is larger than Trump. It is a political infrastructure. It is a governing style. It is a movement that seeks to discipline universities, intimidate journalists, weaken courts, punish dissent, restrict voting, erase histories, bypass Congress, and turn public institutions into instruments of ideological control.

The work before us, then, is not only electoral. It is educational, institutional, legal, cultural, and moral. We must defend academic freedom, public education, independent journalism, voting rights, civil rights, Ethnic Studies, DEI, congressional war powers, and the right to dissent. We must refuse the normalization of intimidation. And we must insist that democracy is not simply the act of voting; it is the entire ecology of institutions, rights, knowledge, and public trust that makes self-government possible.

Darrell West warned us in 2022 that Trump was not the only threat to democracy. Today, we can see the full force of that warning. The threat is not only a man. It is a machinery. And naming that machinery clearly is part of how we begin to resist it.

References

Arnsdorf, I., & Morse, C. E. (2025, January 25). Trump’s first-week strategy: “Flood the zone.” Repeat. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/25/trump-week-one-flood-the-zone/

American-Statesman Editorial Board. (2025, October 30). Trump’s compact would put UT’s academic excellence at risk, Austin American-Statesman. https://www.statesman.com/opinion/editorials/article/editorial-trump-s-compact-put-ut-s-academic-21126977.php

Bendavid, N. (2025, June 9). For Trump, seizing emergency powers has become central to governing, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/09/trump-emergencies-protests-deportations-tariffs/

Berman, M., & Stein, P. (2026, March 2). Justice Dept. abandons defense of orders targeting law firms. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/02/trump-law-firms-appeal/

Columbia University Office of the President. (2025, July 23). Resolution of federal investigations and restoration of the University’s research funding, Columbia University. https://president.columbia.edu/news/resolution-federal-investigations-and-restoration-universitys-research-funding

Dans, P., & Groves, S. (Eds.). (2023). Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation. https://www.mandateforleadership.org/

Guardian Staff and Agencies. (2025, April 14). Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands,The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/14/trump-harvard-funding-freeze

Meyer, T. (2026, June 16). Senate rejects resolution to block Trump from further strikes on Iran, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/16/senate-rejects-resolution-block-trump-further-strikes-iran/

Meyer, T. & Alfaro, M. (2026, June 4). House votes to block Trump from ordering more strikes on Iran, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/03/house-passes-war-powers-resolution-push-trump-end-iran-war/

Powers, M., & Brown, C. (2025, March 24). Fallout from Columbia capitulation fuels fears about academic freedom, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/03/24/fallout-columbia-capitulation-fuels-fears-about-academic-freedom/

Raymond, N. (2025, December 19). US appeals Harvard court victory on $2 billion funding freeze. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-appeals-harvard-court-victory-2-billion-funding-freeze-2025-12-19/

Reuters. (2025, July 24). White House touts Columbia deal, critics see dangerous precedent. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/white-house-touts-columbia-deal-critics-see-dangerous-precedent-2025-07-24/

Sacchetti, M., Hernández, A. R., & Lamothe, D. (2025, January 20). Trump signs executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship,The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/01/20/trump-immigration-executive-orders/

Wagner, L. & Nover, S. (2026, January 25). Trump has ramped up lawsuits against the media. Here’s where they stand, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/25/trump-media-lawsuits/

West, D. M. (2022, July 25). Trump is not the only threat to democracy, Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-is-not-the-only-threat-to-democracy/

Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Paxton’s Attack on Jolt Echoes a Long History of Silencing Latino Political Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 1, 2025

While I do not pretend to know the particulars beyond what has been reported by Nguyen and Klibanoff in the Express-News (2025), the effort by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shut down the Jolt initiative—one of the state’s most effective Latino civic-engagement organizations—most certainly fits into a well-established pattern. It echoes a long Texas history of suppressing Latino political power through intimidation, manufactured crises, and the selective use of state authority.

To truly understand this moment, we must see it in its historical and decolonial context. For well over a century, Texas has deployed legal, political, and bureaucratic tools to police and shrink the political power of Latino communities. From poll taxes, white primaries, English-only ballots to literacy tests, voter purges, and now “election integrity” scare tactics, the state has continuously reengineered the political landscape to maintain racial hierarchy.

Today’s version of that old project further includes gerrymandering—most notably the failed attempt, under pressure from Donald Trump, to draw five new congressional districts designed to dilute rising Latino voting power and secure permanent Republican control. That map was ultimately too extreme even for Texas courts, but the message was unmistakable: Latino political participation is to be contained, not cultivated (Guo, 2025).

Paxton’s attack on Jolt follows the same logic. It stems from a thoroughly debunked 2024 social-media rumor alleging that migrants were being registered to vote at driver’s license offices in North Texas—a claim that local officials, including Republican leaders, dismissed outright. Yet Paxton seized on this fiction to launch an intrusive investigation into groups working primarily with Latino voters.

When his initial efforts faltered in court, Paxton simply pivoted, filing a new lawsuit accusing Jolt of orchestrating an “unlawful voter registration scheme,” despite providing no evidence of noncitizen voting. Instead, he targets the organization for conducting voter registration drives at DMV locations—community hubs where working-class Latinos naturally gather. In a telling distortion of Texas election law, he now frames a volunteer’s explanation of the parent-agent provision as evidence of wrongdoing.

The point is intimidation, not truth.

Taken together, these actions reveal a disturbing theory of democracy: Latino civic participation is inherently suspect, and any infrastructure that supports it must be dismantled. Whether through extreme gerrymanders designed to nullify Latino voting strength, or legal assaults on organizations registering Latino youth, the goal is the same—maintain political power by shrinking the electorate.

A decolonial lens makes this continuity visible. Latino civic organizations like Jolt are not just registering voters; they are challenging a longstanding colonial logic that extracts labor while denying civic belonging. When young Latinos organize, vote, and assert political agency, they interrupt the racial order Texas has spent generations protecting. That is the disruption Paxton is attempting to crush.

And this is not new. Texas officials have repeatedly equated Latino civic engagement with disorder or fraud, from the surveillance of Chicano activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Contreras, 2025) to the recent attempt to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House (see Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc. 2025). Each episode follows the same pattern: when Latinos build power, the state responds by declaring that power illegitimate.

see Contreras (2025)

Jolt is simply the latest target.

That said, it surely concerns the political establishment that approximately 200,000 Latina and Latino youth in Texas turn 18 every year (as Jolt notes on its webpage). This rising generation of Gen Z voters represents a profound demographic shift—one that makes efforts to suppress Latino civic engagement not only predictable, but deeply revealing of the racialized anxieties driving state power.

The lawsuit against Jolt is not about voter fraud—it is about fear. It is about a political establishment that recognizes the demographic reality of Texas and is scrambling to freeze the electorate in place. It is about denying young Latinos the tools they need to participate in public life. It is, at its core, an attempt to preserve a political order that can no longer command the consent of a changing population.

Texas cannot claim to be a democracy while treating the political participation of its largest communities of color as a threat to be neutralized. Jolt’s resistance is not only a legal fight—it is an act of collective self-determination. It affirms what generations of activists, elders, and organizers before us have insisted: we belong here, our voices matter, and our political engagement strengthens, rather than threatens, the fabric of this state. We need and deserve organizations like Jolt that do the essential work of cultivating young leaders, expanding civic participation, and ensuring that Latino communities can exercise the full rights of citizenship. To defend Jolt is to defend democracy itself.

The struggle for Latino political power in Texas is far from over, but the outcome of this case will say much about who this state believes democracy is for.

Reference

Contreras, R. (2025, January 6). Scoop: CIA releases docs on Latino civil-rights-era surveillance, Axios. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/06/cia-releases-docs-latino-civil-rights-era-surveillance?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Guo, K. (2025, July 10). As Texas Republicans prepare for mid-decade redistricting, cautionary tales loom from the past, Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/texas-redistricting-congressional-districts-past-mistakes-overreach/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Nguyen, A., & Klibanoff, E. (2025, November 11). Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down. San Antonio Express-News. https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/texas-latino-civic-group-sues-to-block-ag-ken-21163598.php

Paxton v. Annunciation House, Inc., No. 24-0573 (Tex. Sup. Ct. May 30, 2025). https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/supreme-court/2025/24-0573.html

Texas Latino civic group sues to block AG Ken Paxton from shutting it down

By ALEX NGUYEN and ELEANOR KLIBANOFF/The Texas Tribune,Nov 11, 2025

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut them down. Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that the group had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”
This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into their voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut them down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.

“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.

The background

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering migrants to vote outside state drivers license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into organizations including Jolt.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization as well as put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office now said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

In addition, Paxton announced earlier this year that his office is investigating cases of “potential noncitizens” casting more than 200 ballots in 2020 and 2022, which would be around one-thousandth of 1% of the votes cast during these periods.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 registered voters who were flagged as “potential noncitizens.” At least six of them have been confirmed to be U.S. citizens.

Voters also recently approved a constitutional amendment adding language to the state’s constitution saying that a person who is not a U.S. citizen cannot vote in Texas. Noncitizen voting was already illegal prior to this update.

Why Texas sued

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a DMV location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar still instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

Although when the agent asked for a form to take his daughter, the Jolt volunteer said he could not let the agent have one. The agent said the volunteer then inferred that he could register his daughter to vote, which is illegal, according to the filing.

“I stated in a question format that I couldn’t have one, and (the VDR) replied that since I have her information, I could register her to vote, alluding to being a parent and that I had that right,” the agent wrote. “This was inferring that I could sign her voter registration card, and while (the VDR) made this statement he overtly looked away. This is not only incorrect but illegal per election code.”

Jolt disputed this claim about legality in its court filing.

Paxton’s filing didn’t provide evidence of Jolt registering noncitizens to vote. Instead, it said the group’s decision to hold voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

Paxton brought the lawsuit in Tarrant County, saying that a “substantial part of the events” underlying its claims took place there.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” he said in a news release. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

What Jolt says

The nonprofit filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, asking a judge to stop Paxton’s state lawsuit because it infringes on their rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Jolt said in a court filing that its volunteer didn’t do anything wrong because Texas’ election code does allow for a person to appoint their parent as “an agent” to “complete and sign a registration application” for them. The parent must also be a qualified voter or must have submitted a registration application and be eligible to vote, according to the code.

“Here, the State provides very few particularized factual allegations in its Petition to support its Motion for Leave, instead relying upon sweeping but unsupported claims about Jolt’s motives, beliefs and activities,” the group said in its initial response to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Jolt also said it will fight to defend its mission, adding that Paxton is “abusing his authority” in order to stop its voter registration drives.

“This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas,” ⁨Jackie Bastard⁩, Jolt’s executive director, said in a news release.

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

The Fight for Higher Education: A Minority Perspective on both the Liberal University and President Michael Roth, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Fight for Higher Education: A Minority Perspective on both the Liberal University and President Michael Roth

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
August 26, 2025

On June 1, 2025, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, appeared on Face the Nation with a sober warning: America’s universities are under siege. His words echo what many of us already feel—that the right-wing assault on higher education is not about protecting students, but about silencing dissent and reshaping universities into tools of authoritarian control.

Michael Roth, Wesleyan University President

Roth pointed to a troubling trend: increased visa restrictions and scrutiny of international students. For decades, these students have enriched our universities, bringing new perspectives and strengthening democracy. Now, instead of welcoming them, the government is using fear as a weapon—meant not for safety, but to intimidate campus communities into silence.

“This heightened scrutiny is meant to instill fear on college campuses… and I’m afraid it is working. I’m afraid, too. But we have to defend our freedoms.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation (June 1, 2025)

That admission is telling. When university presidents themselves feel constrained from speaking out, this should be a bright, neon sign, signaling danger to our democracy. The silencing of higher education leadership threatens to normalize submission, paving the way for broader suppression across society. 

I spoke with a UT student activist this week who said that the students are afraid “because of what happened on campus in Spring 2023.” She referred to the violent arrests and the crushing of dissent when the students marched for DEI and pro-Palestine. I was saddened to learn of this scarring effect on our students. It's not supposed to be this way.

Where Roth Misses the Mark

In the July 26, 2025 episode of The Gray Area, Roth acknowledged that universities do need to change. He argued that campuses should broaden the range of political and cultural views they engage, but that this process must occur organically within the academy—not be imposed through authoritarian politics that seek to gut institutions altogether.

By his own admission, Roth has long argued that higher education reproduces intellectual homogeneity, with faculty often hiring in their own image reflecting matters of comfort and affinity rather than a commitment to genuine diversity of thought and background. He characterizes this as “prejudice”—or what pundits more commonly label as “bias.”

This is where I interject. Roth names "prejudice" but softens it, casting exclusion as faculty “comfort” rather than as systemic injustice rooted in Eurocentrism. In so doing, he risks sounding like an apologist for the very exclusions that marginalized scholars have struggled against for decades.

Higher education has only begrudgingly opened space, with many of us still struggling for a foothold. Were this not the case, we would never have had the in-depth analysis of such bias as laid out in the Independent Equity Committee (IEC) report (2019).

Yet Roth’s framing risks obscuring the structural inequities that the IEC report documents as entrenched features of the academy. For decades, higher education has reproduced sameness—faculty hiring in their own image, privileging comfort over difference, and narrowing the range of voices deemed legitimate.

Beyond “Both-sides-ism”

Both Roth’s critique and the demands of marginalized communities highlight this structural conservatism. The difference lies in what each sees as the remedy and the stakes.

Roth’s call for broader viewpoints risks collapsing into the narrow, colonial logics of ‘both-sides-ism,’ where structural inequities are obscured in the name of balance. By contrast, communities of color have long pressed for something deeper: not balance within the old frame, but transformation of the frame itself—a struggle for epistemic justice, meaning fairness, equity, and representation in the production of knowledge.

The overlap suggests a shared recognition of the dangers of insularity. Yet the divergence is revealing: Roth frames the challenge primarily as a matter of political balance, while scholars of color insist that the struggle is not merely about balance but about epistemic inclusion—expanding whose knowledge counts, whose voices are heard, and whose experiences are legitimized within the academy. 

That distinction matters, because one treats the problem as an internal “fix” for higher education’s legitimacy, while the other treats it as one of knowledge equity and who gets to shape the future of the academy and society.

Universities as Scapegoats

Roth correctly talks back to those who say that colleges and universities have brought today’s backlash on themselves through insularity, elitism, or intolerance of differing views. Roth sees this as unfair, arguing that the policies currently confronting higher education are not natural consequences of campus culture but deliberate political attacks.

Framing universities as somehow “deserving” this wave of legislation doesn’t just excuse it—it helps justify authoritarian overreach. Of course, critique is needed, but it should strengthen higher education, not be twisted into cover for dismantling academic freedom and democracy itself.

In one of his most forceful points on Face the Nation, Roth rejected the claim that current attacks on universities are really about fighting antisemitism:

“The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities… I think is a complete charade. On the contrary, I think more Jews will be hurt by these attacks than helped.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation(June 1, 2025)

In short, universities should be spaces for debate, not reduced to spectacles of scapegoating in the service of political or partisan battles.

The Texas Frontline

For those of us in Texas, Roth’s concerns are painfully familiar. With Senate Bill 17 dismantling DEI offices in higher education and chilling the climate for students, faculty, and staff of color, we’ve seen firsthand how authoritarian overreach cloaks itself in the language of “fairness” or “protecting students.”

In reality, these measures erode inclusion, silence marginalized voices, and weaken the democratic mission of public education. Roth’s warning reminds us that what happens in Texas is not isolated—it’s part of a national campaign to undermine academic freedom and reshape universities into compliant institutions.

This is a fight we cannot afford to sit out. Roth is correct in saying that this is an attack on civil society itself. Faculty, students, and community allies must organize, resist, and insist on universities that foster truth, inclusion, and democracy.

Even if the battle is far from over, I am happy to report that we at UT Austin continue to be on the frontlines of this struggle in Texas (Valenzuela, Unda, & Mena Bernal, 2025). The attacks we are seeing are not the endgame; they are part of a decades-long project to silence difference and control knowledge itself. Our response must be just as sustained, just as creative, and just as determined.

Why It Matters for Democracy

When universities lose their independent standing and edge closer to the ideology of those in power, we face a slippery slope. Higher education ceases to function as a space of critical inquiry and instead becomes an instrument of state control. This is precisely what authoritarian regimes do. What begins as subtle pressure to align with dominant political currents can quickly evolve into direct censorship of ideas, restriction of research agendas, and silencing of protest and dissenting voices.

This erosion not only undermines the integrity of academic institutions but also weakens civil society itself, since universities have historically provided one of the few protected arenas for cultivating democratic habits of questioning, debate, and discovery. In short, when higher education becomes an echo chamber for those in power, it fails in its public mission and accelerates the very authoritarian tendencies it ought to resist.

References

Bingamon, B. (2024, November 22). The right-wingification of UT: Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools. Austin Chronicle.

Illing, S. (Host). (2025, July 26). What the right’s war on college is really about [Audio podcast episode]. In The Gray Area. Vox. https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/421054/college-ai-attack-roth-wesleyan-trump (vox.com)

Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Analysis of representation and compensation for Hispanic faculty at UT Austin. University of Texas at Austin.

Roth, M. (2025, June 1). Michael Roth discusses threats to higher education [Interview]. Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. CBS News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlCnVgd-jkc

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. & Mena Bernal, J. (2025). Disrupting Colonial Logics: Resistance to SB 17 in Texas Higher Education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies, 3(1).

Valenzuela, A. (2024). Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin, Texas Observer